Department S

- Season 2

(1969)

Spanish police attempt to flag down a white Chevrolet but it crashes and is revealed to have been 'driven' by a dummy and worked by remote control. Jason notes that the dummy is wearing an identical tie-pin to a man in England whose speciality is remote-controlled cars. Back in Spain, despite lack of cooperation from the local authorities, the team foil an attempt to drive a remote-controlled vehicle into a N.A.T.O. convoy.

Cal and Thorn, two Americans, go deep sea diving on the Costa Del Sol and, having brought ashore a fish, proceed to double-cross and kill each other. The fish turns out to be plastic and contains a hundred thousand dollars in notes. The Department team arrive and Stewart and Annabelle pose as a married couple interested in diving to discover the drop-off whilst Jason heads for Madrid in pursuit of the engraver who is making the counterfeit notes.

An intruder named Gerhard breaks into the heavily guarded grounds of a villa belonging to a man named Kolliatis, who has just gone to sleep after watching a home movie. Rather than steal anything Gerhard glues a clown's mask onto the sleeping man's face. When Kolliatis wakes up and tries to remove it he has a heart attack and dies. As he was a friend of Sir Curtis the Department 'S' team are called in and discover a vendetta and a blackmail racket.

In Rome Johnnie is visited by 'the brothers' and there is a shoot-out, resulting in carnage. Johnnie has given the tipsy Stacey a package to be delivered to Paris and when a curious Stacey opens it, he finds three plastic flowers and a cryptic quotation. Herein lies the key to the whereabouts of five million stolen dollars. Department 'S' is called in to go to Paris and find the loot but there are other interested parties who, needless to say, will kill for possession of the clues.

Something strange has happened at the Bellman-Parsons chemical factory. Although locals claim that they saw the work force arriving as normal, the management report that all of the regular employees reported in as sick, except one, and he is later found murdered. A substitute work force has been using the factory for a plot involving the use of its tankers, a gold robbery and the soon-to-be-opened Northover nuclear power generating station, where Annabelle is held captive by the villains.

Safe-cracker James Rankin dies,wearing the space-suit he stole from as aerospace institute in Farnham. Jason finds out from his sister Leila that he was about to take part in the robbery of a safe with a magnetic combination. Posing as Rankin's replacement Jason makes contact with the gang and finds that they are planning to steal two million pounds' worth of diamonds which are being kept in a safe in the sub-zero vacuum of a frozen foods factory.

In the South of France two hitmen study a photograph of a man taken in a festival square. They then go to his house with the intention of killing him but he drops down dead of a heart attack. The body is removed to the local morgue where the killers overpower the mortuary attendant and shoot bullets into the corpse. The dead man is identified as Christopher Lomax, a small-time crook, but he supposedly died three years earlier. The Department is called in to investigate how a man can die twice - assuming that he died in the first place.

At the City of Southwark hospital senior British civil servant Peregrine Haslett-Smith is about to undergo a tricky operation but Mr. Walker, the surgeon responsible, is knocked unconscious and, when he recovers, finds that somebody else has completed the operation. The only surgeon capable of performing such a delicate operation would be Dr. Uri Dutrov, but he is retired and living in Moscow, where Stewart goes to interview him. Jason, however, flies South to Istanbul to uncover the real truth behind the perfect operation.

An aeroplane carrying MI5 agent Anthony James Harvey explodes over the English Channel and eye witnesses claim that nobody could have survived. However, evidence washed up on the Kent coast leads Sir Curtis to believe that Harvey actually parachuted from the plane before the explosion and staged his own death. He is a double agent who has been working for the Russians and has spent years creating a new identity to escape his masters. As the Department 'S' team go to interview Harvey's mother and associates they are observed and pursued by Russian agents.

After the voice of an airline pilot announces to the passengers that they are on their way to Athens, one of the travelers turns around and shoots another one through the back of his seat before exiting by jumping off the plane - onto solid ground. He is then pursued by other 'passengers' but escapes. The whole plane set is a mock-up built in a Paris warehouse, and when local police, alarmed by the shots, find it, the Department 'S' team is called in to investigate. A message scrawled in lipstick on the windshield of Stewart's car leads them to a girl - who is ...

Sir Curtis and a lady friend are at an antiques auction in Bond street, where a mirror sells for an astronomically high sum in view of its appearance. Later Gresford, the man who bought the mirror is murdered and it is discovered that he had at his home another, virtually identical mirror. An intrigued Sir Curtis gets the team to investigate, leading Jason to the antique shops of Paris.

A tube train arrives at Redbridge station with all its passengers dead and the conductor who found it is also knocked out by nerve gas. Whilst Annabelle is escorting Mrs. Taylor, the widow of one of the dead men, from the morgue, they are held up and Mrs. Taylor is abducted, as later is Jason, whilst investigating at the station. The trail leads to a manufacturing company where Annabelle goes undercover as a secretary though she too is in danger when her employers, criminal speculators out to tap the hotline between the White House and 10 Downing Street, discover who ...

Greg Halliday, disgruntled employee at a chemical works, leaves the plant with a phial of deadly nerve gas. He is captured by enemy agents out to obtain his lethal product but saved by the intervention of the Department. However, he absconds to London and threatens to unleash the gas and destroy the city unless world governments listen to his plans for peace.

Arriving at Marling Dale Ministry of Defence building in the countryside the chauffeur driving government official Byrom Blain opens his passenger's door to find only a skeleton. Department 'S' joins with the C.I.A. to unravel a plot to kidnap illustrious men and replace them with skeletons and Sir Curtis is on the list of victims, along with Jason.

Having thrown away his passport Spencer Bodily shoots and kills himself in Hyde park. At the inquest the coroner declares that his organs are those of a man in his sixties but he only looks about twenty. Not only is his body stolen from the mortuary but his belongings are stolen from his hotel room as well. The trail leads to the surgery of a Dr. Kendall and a sinister take on the secret of eternal youth.

Economist John Burnham is due to become the next head of the International Monetary Fund and he has progressive ideas which certain Communist agents do not want to see put into play so they shoot his wife Mary in front of him. However Burnham keeps repeatedly seeing Mary, though it is assumed that he is going mad, which is what his enemies have set out to achieve in order to discredit him and his work and harm the Western economy. Department 'S' are called in and soon discover that there is an impostor impersonating Mary.

Interpol agent Birney arrives in Beirut and soon afterwards his body is found washed up on a beach. Sir Curtis believes he drowned accidentally whilst out swimming but Stewart, a personal friend of his, disagrees. Sir Curtis takes the view that Stewart would be too emotionally involved and sends Jason to carry on Birney's investigation of a drug smuggling racket, but inevitably Stewart goes too.

In Liverpool four men break into a bonded warehouse and smash through a wall all to steal a crate containing a hundred and forty four cans of Supa De Mariscos fish soup imported from Portugal. Next day the spoils are found round the corner, intact. It becomes apparent from the Department's investigations that these men stole the 'wrong' crate and were after another which contained what they were after. In a trail that leads from a trendy boutique to the Ramos canning factory in Lisbon Jason sets out to find what the burglars were really hoping to find.

An elderly man, wandering on an airport runway in his night wear, is killed by an incoming plane; Jason talks to the man's niece and discovers he worked in industrial financial. Meanwhile, Sir Curtis asks Stewart and Annabelle to track down a scientist working on an advanced form of brain-washing. Jason's investigations lead him to a sinister country club, run by a man called Carter, in reality a front for the brain-washing experiments of Dr. Dreiker. Unless Annabelle and Stewart can get to Jason in time, it will soon be him walking out in front of the flight path.

Near Naples a car is stopped by a land-mine, then riddled with bullets by attackers. However, the 'victim' in the back seat turns out to be a dummy, whom Jason nicknames Charlie Crippen. The Department discovers that the intended target of the attack was King Frederick, an exiled king threatened by revolutionists, and his enemies are waiting to try again... necessitating another car ride, this time with a human decoy to flush out the killers.